Rabbits, Bread, Seas Of Dead
by HeptaGone
Summary: Katniss has to make a simple, everyday choice. The choice branches between the story we all know and love and something much, much worse. Katniss is dead, Prim is an Avox. One rabbit changed the world. What would it take to change it back again? QUOTES SO FAR: "I absolutley love it!" - Lulubell2495
1. 1: What If

Hey everybody, HeptaGone with the first chapter to a Hunger Games fanfic I've been planning for a while, Hope you all like it and ANY reviews are a massive help, especially if they include tips or constructive criticism. I'll answer any questions you put out there, and any opinions or ideas on the plot of the story would be really awesome to see as a response, thanks for reading guys, next chapter will come very soon!

This fanfiction starts long before the 74th Hunger Games, not long after Katniss's father dies.

(Disclaimer: If I had invented The Hunger games or its affiliated characters, well, this wouldn't be a FANfiction now would it?)

Chapter 1: What if.

"Food with legs. Deer, birds, rabbits, all ran obliviously through the forest of undisturbed wildlife, untouched by the "perfect society" behind the brick wall, the barbed wire, the electric fence. The cyan blue and emerald green naturally appearing in that forbidden haven clashing with the grey of the walls, the grey of the smoke and the grey of the District 12 sky.

Katniss knew that she was seeing what many others never could, she saw it nearly every day! In that sense she was lucky, perhaps the little piece of nature surrounding the prison so many called "home" was fate's way of compensating her for the misery, the famine. The death of her father.

It occurred to her then that fate had taken even that away from her, to feed what was left of her family, Katniss spent nearly every day scavenging for food, never hunting, she wasn't that desperate, and she didn't know how, the endless hunt for food had started a month ago, when the family's only source of income had perished along with Mr. Everdeen in a mine accident. Katniss set off to find berries, plants, whatever she could find.

Later that day, she found it.

To some people, nothing special, something repulsive, even, the carcass of a rabbit, hopelessly entangled in knotweed from a tree close by. The animal had obviously strangled itself during its escape attempts, and, because of the tree cover and quiet surroundings, remained untouched by other predators. It was here that Katniss faced a choice, it was late, the sun had long since set, the winter cold was settling in and her mother would son begin to worry, depressed as she was from her husbands death, the fear of a missing child was far from doctors orders, or would have been, if they had one. However, the rabbit could feed the Everdeens for a week. It could take hours to salvage the meat from the weeds, but food was scarce enough as it was."

The Katniss you've read about chose to go home for the night, and finds the rabbit gone in the morning, it's so insignificant it's not even mentioned in the story.

But what if Katniss had thought a little more, remembered the beginnings of starvation showing on her little sister's face, and the dishes in the sink, stained with the memories of food long gone?

What if, behind the scenes, she had worked to free the rabbit? Came home an hour later? Why then, this insignificant little choice would trigger a series of events that wouldn't end in the revolution, No Mockingjay, No President Coin.

When Katniss makes that choice, 2 universes are created, in one, the rebellion, District 13, everything you watched and read in the Hunger Games Trilogy.

In the other one, Katniss takes a rabbit home.

And that choice changes Panem forever,

What d'yah think? I'll release the next chapter ASAP, most likley today, so you won't have to wait long for chapter 2! I won't spend log describing tiny choices like I did here, the story will escalate fast. I've always loved the idea that tiny things can make such a huge difference, so I'm finally basing the start of a story on it! Hope you guys enjoyed, by Chapter 5 or 6 we'll probably be in a Hunger Games, so no huge build ups, I promise. Peace out.


	2. 2: A Home Among Prisons

Hey, guys! I've changed the Death in the name to Dead, because the title rhymes that way, chapter 2's right here, a short one, but I'm planning to write a 3rd immediatly afterwards. Credits for the awesome cliff-hanger-ry dramatic ending go to Lulabell2495, a great author who let me adapt a similar line from her HG fanfic, Temporary, take a look, its right here: s/10219648/1/Temporary

Chapter 2: A Home Among Prisons.

An hour later, the rabbit was free.

Katniss had been working for what seemed like an age, night had completley fallen by this point and she had no idea of the time, it was a moonless night, so she couldn't even estimate. Just her luck.

She climbed carefully through the fence surrounding Distrcit 12, the depressing atmosphere of the city pressimg onto her, even when nobody was around, District 12 never felt like home to anyone. She clambered through and felt a small amount of resistance, her rabbit, caught momenterally on the broken electric fence that was supposed to keep people like Katniss inside, like good little prisoners. The rabbit broke free eventually, perhaps part of the skin had ripped, she had no time to check.

Katniss' mother was asleep with Prim. These days, Prim couldn't sleep alone, ever since their father had died. She must have fallen asleep with her mother, for once, she usually fell asleep next to Katniss. Katniss felt the deep sense of guilt hit her as she realised how much trauma Prim must have been put through, wondering where her big sister had gone. Once upon a time, Katniss's mother would have reassured her, tols her thinga would be OK, but she wouldn't do that now. Katniss knew that her mother wouldn't of moved from the bed, the depression had settled in on that one day, little over a month before. On that day, the man of the house should have came back, at a quarter to 8, he always did. He didn't.

By 8 o' clock that autumn night, Katniss' mother was already insane. Already dying inside.


	3. 3: A Loaf For A Life

HEY EVERYONE! Told you I'd bring out chapter 3 yesterday, then my Internet cut out...Thanks so much for reading this, its really awesome to have what you write being read by other people, so I hope you guys enjoy, and don't hate me forever for what I'm about to do to the main character. (Dramatic teaser statement FTW)

Chapter 3: A Loaf For A Life.

Katniss and what was left of her family ate the rabbit, cooked hastily over a fire by Katniss herself, since her mother couldn't help, and for once, nobody was hungry, for a little while, everything was fine. Then things got a whole lot worse.

Katniss would never know it, but some rabbit skin HAD come off when she was caught in the fence. Less than a week later, a peacekeeper found the trace of blood, the scratching of skin. So the electric fence was fixed, just in case the mysterious hunter-gatherer of District 12 decided to break the rules again.

So Katniss couldn't go to find food. This, in he grand scheme of things, meant very little to the Everdeens. If Katniss had not taken the rabbit, she would have found nothing in the woods that week anyway, so an observer might think that the fence changed very little.

The Peacekeeper was, infact, relatively new on the job, moved from duty in District 11 into District 12. Many people would call it a demotion. The man didn't know about certain flying regulations around the District, and by fixing the fence, he accidentally bypassed an extremely important safety measure, put in place to protect the hovercrafts flying above, too and from the Capitol.

Confused? So were the officials who investigated the crash. One such hovercraft had passed over the fence which, with the safety measures on, should have turned off once a hovercraft came near. But it didn't, the electric field created by a hundred volts of pure energy disrupted the low flying craft's communication system. When a craft's communication goes down, the computers take over,

Autopilot kicks in and theoretically, everything's fine, but Autopilot didn't account for the patch of turbulence next to one of District 12's brick warehouses, and once the craft smashed against the wall and fell toward the ground below, nobody could stop the deaths of the 18 passengers on board.

Not long afterwards, the Capitol deemed the flight path unsafe to use, a month later, hovercrafts gave District 12 the wide berth as standard protocol. This, again, meant very little to any of our main characters. But hovercrafts move the air around them, with no hovercrafts around, clouds moved slightly differently. Nothing huge, just clouds, right?

But then came the one fateful day when Katniss once again had no food. A cold, winter morning, the morning when, in our normal story, Peeta gave Katniss a piece of bread, which kept her from starvation long enough for her to learn to hunt.

Just 1 cloud. One that normally would have moved quickly in front of the sun, and then quickly continued it's journey to god-knows-where.

Less hovercrafts, less winds, the cloud stayed in front of the sun for a minute longer, long enough so that Peeta couldn't see the girl, lying in the shadows, an hour from starvation.

He never burned the bread, never gave Katniss that lifesaving loaf.

She never became the girl on fire.

All she ever became was a corpse in an alley, and another starvation statistic.


	4. 4: Breaking Prim

**Hey everybody! Heptagon here, you may have noticed that A) I haven't updates for 4 or 5 days and B) I've stopped being lazy and actually formatted this chapter. I'll update more often, I promise, and as for the formatting, well it only takes about 30 seconds, so I'm too lazy to think of an excuse not to do it. Leave any suggestions, critisisms, rants, flames, social security numbers and favourite brand of potato in the reviews, the first 4 are helpful, the last 2 are just funny. Whats more, I've actually decided to stop the irritating narrator P.O.V and, as you guys guessed, Prim's taking over from here, just don't get too attached, (Winkwink). Thanks for supporting me and this fanfiction, and enjoy chapter 4!**

**Chapter 4: [Br]eaking [P]rim.**

Prim sat alone, finally alone, for good, forever. 3 times in her life she had had a family member ripped away from her. Every time somebody left the Everdeen household, Prim would wait for them to come back. One day, her father didn't come home. One day, Katniss didn't come home, 3 days later, Her mother went to beg in the Hob, as she had had to every day since their final source of income lay dead in the grass, sunken cheeks, pale skin. That day, her mother hadn't came back either. She waited. Sat on her bed. Alone, and eventually asleep.

Prim awoke with a start, before she even opened her eyes she realised how she had woken, jolted awake with a click, one that she felt travel through her, starting from the arms, which were handcuffed, behind her. A peacekeeper shouted something, lost in the sound of her own heartbeat, that of a scared animal, the heartbeat of the capitol's prey. She shouted, and for the first time one of the 3 peacekeepers that now surrounded her noticed she was awake, and quickly hit her, in the back of the head, with the baton he was carrying, Prim was knocked out instantly, before she saw the prison hovercraft outside the house, before she saw her mother, handcuffed unconscious on the ship, surrounded by peacekeepers, before she saw her sister's coffin loaded into the back of the shuttle, the entire Everdeen family headed to god-knows-where.

She awoke on a surgical table. Staring into a bright light above, temporarily blinded, once she regained her senses, she looked around. Realised that she could barely move her head, a leather strap covered her mouth and led into he table, preventing her from speaking or lifting her head to see where she was. She tried to move her hands, feet, but those were strapped too. She could tell she was in a plain white room, but before true panic could set in, she heard a door open and close, a man walked in.

He was clearly from the Capitol, bright yellow hair and a faint tattoo covering his face with a dull, transparent brown striped pattern. Prim was suddenly conscious that she was only wearing plane white underwear, underwear which, with a sickening jolt, she realised somebody must have changed, nothing was clean in District 12.

The man untied the strap over her mouth, but left her bound as she was as he asked: "Primrose Everdeen, District 12?" Prim's throat was sore, her voice hoarse, but she managed to swallow her panic and mutter "y-y-yes..?" after a few tries. The man nodded and said: "Welcome to The Capitol, Prim. You're here for all the wrong reasons.", "w-w-what r-reasons?" she sputtered out "w-w-what did I d-do?", "Well, lets see. Violation of clause 629 section C of Panem law, knowingly witnessing crime within a district and not reporting the incident within a suitable time frame. That's one. You're sister was a criminal, Prim, she left the district, stole capitol property, vandalised the electric fence. You're mother was also caught trespassing in capitol property, what you call "The Hob" was raided, you're whole family is being tried for treason. You're mother's execution is scheduled for tomorrow, Prim, all thats left is too find something to do with you."

Prim was too shocked to speak, her mother, scheduled to die just for trying to feed her family, for a 12 year old girl, the relalation was too much, she was crying within seconds, tugging against her wrist straps, but she couldn't go anywhere, just lie there as what little fragments of her life remained intact after the death of her father dissolved by the will of the Capitol.

"You, Prim, don't deserve to die. We're not monsters, you're just a child, a young one at that, all young people make mistakes." Prim didn't understand, this man had just told her that the Capitol were executing her final family member, and he was showing mercy? "You don't deserve to die, Prim" he repeated, "But you've broken the law, you're far too young too survive a whipping, so we'll have to use your punishment as something to kill 2 birds with one stone, at least this way, you'll be useful to your superiors, Prim. From the moment you were born, you were a slave, we own you, Prim, and you've defied laws that are there to give you productive, safe lives." Prim could begin to see where this was going, surely, he wouldn't, he couldn't, she was just a kid! They couldn't possibly mean to make her an... "...Avox, Prim." The man whispered harshly. "You have 30 seconds before we begin the operation, any last words? You won't speak again, Prim, one sentence, what will it be?

Prim had no strength left for words. An Avox. Her. She was just a kid! They couldn't, no, no, no, no, god no... "p-p-please..." she gasped, "d-don't..." The man just laughed, "You'd be surprised how often we hear that!" And the needle went into her arm, anaesthetic. She was asleep in seconds. The operation began. Prim would never speak, never complain. Just like very other Avox, another face in the crowd, another servant, another slave.

12 years old. Another. Mute. Slave.

**Dramaticness yay! So, that was a pretty long one, hope you guys enjoyed, I should hae another chapter out by wedensday night. So, where should I go from here? Do you like the concept? Do you hate it? Review page is right there folks, show me some love, show me some hate, as long as I know you guys's and girls's opinions I can make this fanfic a billion times better. Merry christmas tributes!**


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